Tricky selection/colour change

I’m working on an image of a giraffe, and part of it is giving me trouble. Have a look at this:

http://www.derekfountain.org/misc/giraffe_bit.jpg

That’s the top of the head, with those cute furry stump things giraffes have. :o)

The background for the entire picture is dark green trees, nicely out of focus, except for this bit just around the top of the head where there’s a gap in the trees. Bright blue sky is showing through which is a distraction. The large, blown out blob is easy to clone over, but the pale blue area directly behind the fur isn’t.

I’ve tried all sorts of things to get that area selected but nothing I try looks convincing. I need to leave the wisps of fur alone, while selecting the blue background. The extract filter did a crap job! The closest I got to success was the PSCS colour replacement brush, which does a decent job of picking out the blue, but for some reason would only replace it with pale green, even when I had the foreground colour set to black. Not sure what’s going on there.

Can anyone give me any tips?

I’m working on an image of a giraffe, and part of it is giving me trouble. Have a look at this:

http://www.derekfountain.org/misc/giraffe_bit.jpg

That’s the top of the head, with those cute furry stump things giraffes have. :o)

The background for the entire picture is dark green trees, nicely out of focus, except for this bit just around the top of the head where there’s a gap in the trees. Bright blue sky is showing through which is a distraction. The large, blown out blob is easy to clone over, but the pale blue area directly behind the fur isn’t.

I’ve tried all sorts of things to get that area selected but nothing I try looks convincing. I need to leave the wisps of fur alone, while selecting the blue background. The extract filter did a crap job! The closest I got to success was the PSCS colour replacement brush, which does a decent job of picking out the blue, but for some reason would only replace it with pale green, even when I had the foreground colour set to black. Not sure what’s going on there.

I’m working on an image of a giraffe, and part of it is giving me trouble. Have a look at this:

http://www.derekfountain.org/misc/giraffe_bit.jpg

That’s the top of the head, with those cute furry stump things giraffes have. :o)

The background for the entire picture is dark green trees, nicely out of focus, except for this bit just around the top of the head where there’s a gap in the trees. Bright blue sky is showing through which is a distraction. The large, blown out blob is easy to clone over, but the pale blue area directly behind the fur isn’t.

I’ve tried all sorts of things to get that area selected but nothing I try looks convincing. I need to leave the wisps of fur alone, while selecting the blue background. The extract filter did a crap job! The closest I got to success was the PSCS colour replacement brush, which does a decent job of picking out the blue, but for some reason would only replace it with pale green, even when I had the foreground colour set to black. Not sure what’s going on there.

Can anyone give me any tips?

I’m working on an image of a giraffe, and part of it is giving me trouble.